I posted this elsewhere, but thought that it should be here too. I build the center channel stand and the smaller "stands" for the M60s to get them in line with each other and to have the tweeters at a good "ear" height. They went into the garage after this picture and got painted flat black. I will "install" them tonight as long as they are super dry, which they should be. Then I can start looking at building the remaining false wall panels and finally calibrate the audio.

Keep in mind that these stands are all about function, not looks. If they were going in front of the screen they would have been built to look nicer, but they are solid and stable and will be unseen.

M60 stand was just a couple of 2x4's holding up a 2x10 top plate. the VP180 stand was 2x12 top, bottom, and sides, with some 2x4 "feet" on the bottom for more stability, and a couple of 2x4 pieces on the top along the front and back that made things a little deeper to accommodate the 12" depth required for the speaker feet to sit solidly on top. Also, since I was using scrap wood, I didn't have a 2x12 that was long enough to go the full 40" wide to match the width of the VP180. I thought that it looked a little nicer to have a full width appearance to the top too. Those top 2x4's also helped to lock the 2x12's so that they stayed square.

So tonight I installed the speaker stands and then ran the full Audyssey deal on my Onkyo. While it doesn't take forever, it is hard to sit there through 8 sets of microphone placements being as still and quiet as possible...

Then I checked out what it adjusted, and popped in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Holy crap. A LOT of sound was missing before that I was now hearing. I only watched up to where they "light the fuse", but wow, oh wow...

BUT...

The vocals were a bit light.

I went back into the settings and looked and it set my center channel to -4.0 db. That's odd, so I set it to +1.0, and tried again. MUCH better. And still WOW!!!

I have NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVEREVEREVER, loved the sound of my Axioms like I do now. I thought that they were good, but I still remember going to Randy's (SirQuack's) place a few years back and being blown away by how much better his setup sounded. In fact, truth be told, that he is one of the main reasons I even did acoustical treatments (yeah, I owe you one Randy). It was that "audition" back then that did it for me and drove me to build what I am building now. And the audition wasn't even for me! I had owned my Axioms for a few years, and he was doing an audition for someone. I brought over some demo DVDs, and the auditionee brought some stuff too. It was great...

But now, my Axioms are really singing!

The biggest shocker during the calibration was how "hot" I was running my sub. It says to manually set it to 75db, and I had it up near 100 db. I had to turn the gain down quite a bit to get down to 75 db before it would calibrate the room. And it sounds great now!

So after that, which I didn't start until 10:30 pm tonight due to graduation party shopping with my wife, I decided to start figuring out the game room layout. I had designed a cubby area for the Pachinko to go, but the layout got changed, and now that cubby is blocked by the pinball machine. Oh well. The pachinko will go elsewhere. I also managed to get the pinball back on its legs, positioned in its spot, and fully tested. I did have to tune a few of the under-playfield "gates" that activate when the ball rolls over that area in the playfield, oh and find the missing 4th ball, but all is well.

Tomorrow I will replace a couple of burnt out bulbs, and give it a good cleaning. Then, I might start setting up bass shakers in the theater, or get the MAME arcade started being put back together too... Then it is PROM for my graduating daughter, so that will take up a few hours with pictures and such.

Sunday is of course mother's day, so we will see how much time I get to work around here. I need to get the wood for the black panels for around the screen, so maybe I can at least squeeze a trip in to the home improvement store. Then I will at least have the materials to get them built. That will probably be the last thing that I will realistically get to before the grad party in 2 weeks. I really wanted to rope light up for the "cool" factor, but it will be difficult to get the time.

I am interested to see what my system will sound like with Audyssey... Nick, does your receiver have the Audyssey pro software? If so, are you going to either buy the pro took kit, or have someone come over to calibrate it? The Integra processor i am thinking about getting has the pro software, i need to do some reading to educate myself about the benefits of Audyssey pro.

Some with Audyssey MultEQ XT do have the "Installer Ready" option for the additional microphone positions and such. Mine does not. I would think that it might be worth the XT32 upgrade if you really want better performance vs. getting the professional tools/software to work. But that is just an opinion. I haven't checked the pricing models.

I posted this elsewhere, but thought that it should be here too. I build the center channel stand and the smaller "stands" for the M60s to get them in line with each other and to have the tweeters at a good "ear" height. They went into the garage after this picture and got painted flat black. I will "install" them tonight as long as they are super dry, which they should be. Then I can start looking at building the remaining false wall panels and finally calibrate the audio.

Keep in mind that these stands are all about function, not looks. If they were going in front of the screen they would have been built to look nicer, but they are solid and stable and will be unseen.

M60 stand was just a couple of 2x4's holding up a 2x10 top plate. the VP180 stand was 2x12 top, bottom, and sides, with some 2x4 "feet" on the bottom for more stability, and a couple of 2x4 pieces on the top along the front and back that made things a little deeper to accommodate the 12" depth required for the speaker feet to sit solidly on top. Also, since I was using scrap wood, I didn't have a 2x12 that was long enough to go the full 40" wide to match the width of the VP180. I thought that it looked a little nicer to have a full width appearance to the top too. Those top 2x4's also helped to lock the 2x12's so that they stayed square.

Curious, since the speakers will not be seen, did you consider the in cabinet version of the M60?

I bought my first round of Axioms (M60s, VP150, and QS8s) back in 2004, and they didn't offer in-cabinet versions. Plus up until now, my front speakers were all out and visable. With the false wall, I have the best of both worlds. If things change again in the future, I still have "regular" speakers. I left a reasonable amount of space behind the speakers to let the ports breathe.

So I lied once again, this time I was saying that I was NOT going to work much on the theater, and yet I did. Around noon on Saturday, I went to Home Depot to pick up some wood for the false wall black panels. The place was packed and I was buying some "by liner foot" priced lumber, so I had to wait a while to get a couple of feet cut off of the wood I was buying. No sense buying more than I need.

Anyway, I got started around 2:30 after the long trip to HD, some lunch, and getting sucked into another episode of Dream Machines.

Anyway, It is now 3:20 am on Sunday, and I am post some pictures. I spent the time from 2:30 until now building the frames (most of them) then going to take PROM pictures, then getting dinner with my wife, then cutting some more lumber for another panel, then going to the PROM announcing ceremony where we paid like $2.50 a ticket to get a reserved seat to sit and watch as they announce the kids arriving. We bolted after our daughter was announced, then it was off to get some ice cream with our 13 year old and my wife's folks, the next thing I know, it is 10:00 pm and I still have to assemble 1 panel, and none of them are covered.

I spent the next 90 minutes assembling, test fitting, making adjustments, to the panels, and then painting the last frame (the other 3 got painted earlier in the day so that they were black behind the velvet coverings). While that was drying, my 13 year old and I started covering the other 3 panels around 11:45 pm. It took a while even though it wasn't hard. I was slightly stretching the fabric, and she was using the air-stapler to attach it once we wrapped it around the frame. The staples went in the back, and thus were hidden and didn't add to the width of the panel or bind up anywhere.

We got done with the 3rd frame and it had been long enough that the 4th frame was dry, so we did that one. We finished up right around 2:00am. Maybe a little earlier. I am sure that I could have stapled 10x faster, but I wanted to make sure that the material was stretched correctly.

So anyway, here are the 2 photos. The first one is of the first panel in place. The room looked better already. The panel is the one below the screen. The frame on the ground is the next one (black side down) that would go to the left of the screen.

Here is the screen wall finished with the bottom panel, side panels, and 3.75" tall (10' wide though) top panel. Sound was still great. No noticeable difference when the panel was in front of the speakers. This is mainly because the whole center channel and about 80% of the two front speakers are behind the AT screen.

I would go to bed now, but my daughter is coming home in 25 minutes with about 11 other people. I've got a breakfast casserole in the oven and I will need to stay up at least long enough to get them all situated. They claim that they are going to watch a movie too, but I think that at least half of them will crash. I know I would.

Funny thing. They are all crashed in the theater room. Here I am dinking around on the computer. It is 6:11 am and I stayed up later than all of them. Woohoo. I think that my prize will be going upstairs and crashing on the couch...